The Wife's Tale by Lori Lansens - Reviewed by Angie Wilson

I knew nothing about this book when I picked it up. I didn’t even bother to read the blurb on the back of the book I just dived in with trepidation and a hopeful spirit. What I got was nothing like what I was expecting. I was submerged into a tale that truly resonated with me; so much so that at times it felt like kismet that I should be reading this book at this point in my life.

The story centres on Mary Gooch. Mary is a wife, a pharmacy clerk, a daughter, a sister-in-law, a daughter-in-law all in the body of a 302 pound woman. Mary lives in Leaford, Canada; a small town where there are no secrets and everybody is watching everyone else. Mary has grown up in Leaford, fallen in love in Leaford and eaten her way through millions of calories in Leaford.

Lori Lansens tells this tale with a poetic and masterful voice. Her language is rhythmic and captivating. The story is brought to life through the strong voice that Lansens empowers Mary with. While Mary is unable to give voice to her thoughts in her daily life, her internal dialogue is potent and compels this story.

Mary is thrust into leaving her predictable and repetitive life when her Husband, Jimmy Gooch, fails to come how from work on the eve of their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. This one act of her Husband triggers a reassessment of all the moments in Mary’s life that have lead to this point in time.

Mary remembered, when she was nine years old, stepping off the scale in Dr. Ruttle’s office and hearing him whisper the word to her slight mother, Irma. It was an unfamiliar word, but one she understood in context of the fairy-tale world. Obeast. There were witches and warlocks. So must there be ogres and obeasts. Little Big Mary wasn’t confused by the diagnosis. It made sense to her child’s mind that her body had become an outward manifestation of the starving animal in her gut.

- The Wife’s Tale; page 2.

It’s the battle between Mary and her Obeast that really speaks in this novel. It casts a light on an epidemic that is killing the Western World in a way that is fresh and raw. Addiction to food is as real as any other addiction; gambling, drinking, drugs – it’s all the same mental battle. The voice in the head that compels a person to make the decisions they do. Mary’s voice has 43 years of experience at pushing her buttons. It is the love of her Husband, or more importantly the fear of abandonment that she sometimes confuses as love, that gives Mary the impetus she needs to ignore that voice for the first time in her life.

This novel is a coming of age tale; despite the fact that Mary is 43 years old and should know what she wants from life by now. Mary has hidden in her world. Shut herself off from the judging gaze of those in her community. Her weight has coloured everything; every experience, emotion or event. In her hiding she has given all her power to her Obeast. Every time she ventures into public her low self opinion is reinforced by the actions of others and in turn the Obeast grows stronger.

When her Husband leaves to ‘find himself’ Mary embarks on a single-minded journey to find him. Instead what she finds is the power to overcome her fear of living and ventures outside of Leaford for the first time in her life. Her hunt for her Husband takes Mary to Los Angeles and the home of her Mother-In-Law.

It seems no coincidence that the author has brought small town overweight Mary to Los Angeles, where body image reins supreme. However the experiences that Mary has while in Los Angeles are in no way predictable nor does the end of the book resolve them. It would have been so easy for the author to paint a standard generic view of the beautiful people in Los Angeles, but she skilfully avoids this pothole.

At times the inability of Mary to take control of her life is frustrating and agonizing. Her lack of confidence in her basic decision making is paralysing and has resulted in her relying on her Husband to do a lot of things she now needs to do to survive. With her Husband gone, and no return in sight, she must learn to stand on her own two feet. This struggle for independence is not only a mental one, but it is mimicked in her physicality as well as she is at times unable to support her own weight.

The relationships that Mary develops while in Los Angeles are unpredictable, moving and heart warming. Lansens shows a side of humanity that is often overlooked in this age of instant gratification and individuality. It’s through these relationships that she starts to learn how to believe in herself and her abilities.

This book finished leaving me wanting more. The book, while it ends does not end with everything resolved; which is rare in this age of a thirty-minute wrap up of all of life’s problems. Lansens has created a great novel that should resonate with a multitude of those suffering under the weight of an eating disorder. I am one of these people and for the first time I feel like some of the things that I have experienced in my life have been given a voice in print that is not judgemental nor compassionate; it just tells it like it is and it doesn’t offer the magic solution. It’s just one woman’s story told beautifully and expertly.

Reviewer Bio:

Angie Wilson is an avid reader of almost anything. A collector of classics and a junkie for romance she lives in Canberra, ACT with her Husband and their fur kids. When not reading she manages her own website at http://gnomeangel.com - it’s a rambling mess of everything she finds interesting and something’s she has no idea about but is willing to give it the good ole’ college try. Her motto in life; “How hard can it be?”

James A. Levine's The Blue Notebook - reviewed by Shandos Cleaver

The Blue Notebook is the tragic tale of Batuk, a beautiful Indian girl sold into prostitution by her poor rural family at the age of nine. After her virginity is auctioned off to the highest bidder, she is taken to work on the Common Street of Mumbai, kept in a cage next to other child prostitutes, including her friend Puneet, a girl-boy who is the most valuable of all.

Upon pilfering a dropped pencil from her boss, the immense Mamaki or “Hippopotamus”, Batuk, miraculously literate followed a protracted hospital stay due to TB, begins to record her life, firstly with the pencil in a blue notebook, followed by a variety of other writing materials. Batuk’s writing is a way for her to reclaim part of her life and keep it secret within herself. “And so I look within myself and assemble myself in words,” she writes. “I take the words that are my thoughts and dreams and hide them behind the dark shadow of my kidney… I craft the words of merriment and sadness (they are the same) into a pyramid and place it under my skin so I can touch it whenever I need to know where my feelings are.”

Repeatedly throughout her writing Batuk descends into a world of fantasy to escape from the grim realities around her. Some of these fantasies she acknowledges that she knows are false, such as the euphemism of “sweetcake” for the act of sex and the references to herself as a “princess” and her cage as a magnificently decorated “throne”: “I am not deranged, but there are countless days I wish I were.” However, there are other times when it seems that her senses are overwhelmed and she no longer knows what is reality and what is imagination, particularly with the tiger skin in the hotel penthouse she is later taken to.

As you delve deeper into the world of Batuk, particularly during the scenes that ensue in the hotel penthouse, it is hard not to hope that as this is a work of fiction, occurrences like this don’t really happen in the world. However, it is hard to ignore the stark truth and the facts about child prostitution in many parts of the world, including India. And whilst Batuk’s story may be fictional, it was inspired by the author’s sighting, whilst investigating child labour for the UN, of a street girl, “the girl in the pink sari with the rainbow trim”, in such a street Mumbai writing intently in a notebook.

A mesmerizing story despite the heartbreaking tale that it tells, The Blue Notebook brings a touching human face to the sad reality of child prostitution. Along with the benefits that it will bring through the donation of part of its proceeds to the International and National Centers for Missing and Exploited Children, hopefully this book will also raise people’s awareness and stop us from deluding ourselves that such issues don’t exist.

REVIEWER BIO:

An avid reader as long as she can remember, Shandos Cleaver has most recently worked as an IT programmer and enjoys art festivals, wine tasting, books that let her experience life all over the world and a healthy addiction to Twitter (@scleaver).

Chandler Burr's You Or Someone Like You - Reviewed by Elena Gomez

New York Times perfume critic Chandler Burr decided to vent his angry opinion about orthodox religion to the world. His chosen medium? A charming and sophisticated novel about married couple Anne and Howard Rosenbaum.

English-born, and with a PhD in literature, Anne Rosenbaum is classy. But she’s also a snob. As the narrator, her eloquence and powerful opinions set her apart from the glamourous superficial world of Hollywood that her movie executive husband is part of. Despite the glaringly obvious: “nobody in Hollywood reads”, Anne suddenly finds herself the leader of a book club, filled with hotshot directors and agents.

Despite Anne and Howard’s love for each other, and their seventeen-year-old son Sam, they can’t escape the dark spot in their lives: Howard comes from an Orthodox Jewish family who refuse to accept Anne as their daughter-in-law. And Orthodox Jewish religion dictates that the child is the religion of the mother. You can imagine, they have their fair share of awkward moments. Howard has shunned the Talmudic reasoning for Anne’s love. As the presence of this truth ebbs and flows in their lives, Anne finds she is becoming a celebrity in her own right, with all of Hollywood waiting to see what book she will recommend to her club next.

You Or Someone Like You is a multilayered story. Firstly, and perhaps at its most shallow level, it is a wistful scenario about what Hollywood would be like if all its top suits and execs were well-versed in English literature. But it is also a sociological examination about humans and group identity, of “Us and Them”, as explored through Howard’s sudden orthodox Jewish reawakening. It’s a bitter and controversial look at the hypocrisy of religion, and while in this case examines the faults of Judaism (Burr suggests a ‘holier-than-though’ attitude), it could be easily said about any of the major religions of the world, religions that require their followers to believe they are better people than others because of their faith. But, to the book loving readers of Burr’s novel, it is a gorgeous exploration of literature, and how it affects us, how it permeates through our lives, and informs our relationships with others and ourselves. Anne is the ever articulate expert on Eliot, Auden and Shakespeare, and her love of the written word is contagious, leaping off the pages. She tells her audience, and us, “Literature shocks not because what it shows about us is inherently surprising. It does the exact opposite. It is shocking because it breaks down what we would be and shows us what we know we are.” (p378)

Despite being a compelling read, the story at times is didactic and a little preachy. And with all these layers, it’s an emotional and intellectual bombardment. Anne is a self-proclaimed snot, yet her other fault, a coldness-masked fragility, is ultimately what allows us to sympathise with her. The book will fill your head with so much to think about that you emerge from it feeling a little heady. But this isn’t exactly a terrible thing.

A startlingly emotional story about the pervasiveness of orthodox religion, told through the marriage of Jewish Hollywood executive Howard Rosenbaum and his Gentile, PhD literature-holding wife, Anne. Witty and full of fantastic references to English and American literature, it’s a social exploration of the ever-confusing notion of identity and belonging in the modern world.

Spencer Ratcliff's Wonder, Thunder and Blunder Down Under - reviewed by Shandos Cleaver

At first glance, I didn’t really like the look of Wonder, Thunder and Blunder Down Under, the debut book from Spencer Ratcliff, a “Ten Pound Pom” immigrant to Australia in the 1970s. The cover was so brash and colourful, with a comic style similar to Mad magazine, that I wondered what kind of travel memoir this would be. Maybe this book was just one for the lads?
Once I started reading the book, however, I realised that the overly bright cover was partially deceiving. Yes, Wonder, Thunder and Blunder Down Under did detail some very humorous and at times candid exploits, particularly involving women, but it always stayed on the right side of good taste. Probably one of the reasons for this, is that, along with picking up some Australian strine and a slight twang to his accent (which he occasionally used trying to pass himself off as an Aussie whilst around women, rather unsuccessfully), Ratcliff’s move to Australia also resulted in him picking up the typically Australian gift of yarning. The resulting writing is entertaining and deprecating, and whilst not as polished as I generally would expect in a published book, the casual style is probably part of the book’s charm.
Ratcliff’s tale is divided into twenty-two stories, or should I say “yarns”. Starting with his arrival in Sydney in 1970, for the first half of the book Ratcliff details the exploits of his initial two-year stay in Australia, working as a journalist for ABC radio, both in Grafton on the northern coast of NSW and in Sydney, just down the road from the temptations of Kings Cross. Ratcliff’s encounters with Australian women are particularly memorable, such as the women sitting outside the hotel in Grafton in their boyfriend’s cars and the dangerous Bondi encounter with a bride-to-be.
When a visit from a young English rose and the subsequent blooming of their love leads him to return back to England, Ratcliff promises the land he has also fallen for, and the Coathanger in particular, that he “shall return”. However, it ends up being a long six years, during which time he travels around the globe, taking in England, Africa, Israel and the USA, before he returns to his yearned for Oz.
Whilst Australia is obviously the country at the centre of the book, I found the most engrossing stories to be those set in 1970s Zimbabwe (then known as Rhodesia), during the three years that Ratcliff spent working at a journalist there during the civil war immediately before Zimbabwe’s creation. Displaying a sensitive insight into the issues being encountered in the country (and from close range due to his work), these sections provide an interesting contrast to the humorous exploits that populate the majority of the book.
It all adds up to Wonder, Thunder and Blunder Down Under being an entertaining read, whether you are interested in Ratcliff’s perspective on 1970s Australia and Zimbabwe, or you just want to casually dip into a collection of funny and entertaining yarns whilst on holidays or while riding the train to work (perhaps even going over Ratcliff’s beloved Coathanger).

Mitch Albom's Have a Little Faith - Reviewed by Ron Reynolds

From the author of "Tuesdays with Morrie." This is in the same genre
and a delightful read.
Mitch is asked to prepare a eulogy by his old Rabbi (Reb) Albert Lewis.
Not understanding why, he accepts and thus follows a spiritual journey
for Albom that has him for thinking about his Jewish roots but also the
reasons for our need for belief whether it be in a Creator or perhaps
why we need to have any outer faith outside our own inner belief in the
"self"
A thoughtful read for those who like the challenge of asking, "Do we
need Faith," is the discipline of religious practice really necessary to
our needs in this 21st. century?
Mitch's book is a very interesting non-intellectual look at what some of
us may need reminding of, that material means may not provide us with
the inner peace many of us are searching for. A very good book.